2018 - The Year Ahead For Sony Machine Vision

By Matt Swinney, Senior Marketing Manager

As a company, what are your main objectives for 2018?

We are focusing on further developments in our GSCMOS-based camera line up as we seek to continue to elevate market expectations of complete camera performance in an industry already very familiar with Sony sensor technology.

What are your main challenges for 2018?

The market place is crowded with camera competitors offering many varieties of cameras in terms of resolution, frame rate, size, interface and sensor type among others. Sony has a strong brand image and deep history in camera technology from broadcast & professional to consumer to industrial imaging products and components which is not always visible in Machine Vision, even though for many years we have been an industry leader in this market.

Our challenge therefore remains to continue to be the leader in innovation not just in our sensors but in our Machine Vision cameras as well. A usable image is more than just the sensor and at Sony our drive, determination and therefore challenge is to continue to build the best cameras.

In your opinion, what will be the biggest machine vision trends in 2018?

Innovations in our very own sensor technology will continue to open up new application possibilities during 2018. There are also of course a number of developments in areas such as machine learning and AI which should be on everyone’s radar in the coming years.

What will be the biggest machine vision challenges in 2018?

We can view this question in a number of ways.

From a camera point of view the machine vision industry in recent years has been dominated by a mixture of dedicated MV camera companies alongside well-known brands such as Sony (as an example of a large corporation with imaging as part of a wider commercial offering). What we have seen over the past few years are new entrants coming into the MV camera market that have originally operated successfully in other markets such as video and network security. I think 2018 will see further disruption to the activities of traditional players, which naturally will encourage a response; for example this may mean greater diversification into non-manufacturing environments and perhaps other markets altogether in order to mitigate competitive pressures.

In terms of vision systems, the barriers to entry for new players have been higher, with system complexity driven by specialism and customisation. This creates an ecosystem with inertia against change. This has helped to retain attractive market opportunities for such providers and system integrators who operate within the vision system ecosystem. However I would be interested to see how further technological innovations in terms of Industry 4.0 and future cloud-based machine learning will develop and how this may start to challenge current convention.